words for good measure and telling me to get the hell out of her sight. Devastated but convinced I’d been wronged, I stomped back across the stage, stopped midway, tossed a nasty side-eye at Deena, and then stomped out the door without saying a word.
I was on the other side of the curtain, giggling with nervous laughter, floating with excitement when my ears were finally able to focus on the audience’s reaction: they were hysterical with laughter. Out of everything that was happening onstage, it was my timing and foolery that they remembered—a moment that came at the end of a transition scene. I may have had a bit part, but I was in Dreamgirls, and folk who counted were paying attention, including my mother. She wasn’t convinced there was a career in acting, and having scrimped and saved to get three steps forward only to consistently fall two steps behind, she wanted something more secure for me than “starving artist.” That’s all she could see for me, her child who was born with neither silver spoon nor serious connection to Hollywood, a glittery mirage seemingly so far from reach it might as well have been on the other side of the galaxy. Her questions made sense: “I’m a single mom, how on earth can I support you in this? What if you can’t get a job? Then what?” It was hard to argue against her judgment. But on the opening night of Dreamgirls, when she watched me strutting across that stage, finally she saw me, and she pledged her unconditional support.
When I wasn’t working on my role, I was still prop mistress, but I continued studying everyone else’s roles, too; I knew every line, every song, every stage direction, where every prop lay. When a fellow student with a key role as a singer in the opening of the play had to drop out, I was ready. Professor Malone took to the stage to announce her part was open, and I jumped at the chance to play it.
“I got it! I can do it!” I shouted, raising my hand like some nerd eager to answer the teacher’s question.
Professor Malone shook his head, looked me up and down, and smirked. “Well, you better get your heels and come in here tomorrow ready to show me what you got.”
“I have my heels right here!” I said, reaching down into my knapsack.
“All right, then get your ass up here and sing the song,” he said.
I hurriedly slipped on my shoes and took my position as the music director counted down, and when he got to “one,” I hit every last one of the steps and notes with a jubilance that made the entire cast cheer me on. When, finally, they all quieted, I looked over at Professor Malone, eager to hear the magical words. “Well,” he said, “I guess you got the part.”
The next thing I knew, the show was such a hit, it was selling out every night, with fans from near and far coming to see the wonder that was the Howard University Theatre’s Dreamgirls production. So successful was the first run that Professor Malone revived it for a second run the next academic year, catching the attention of a major theater producer from Hong Kong who happened to be in DC. That producer loved the play so much that he paid for our entire production—the actors, the directors, the wardrobe, the props, everything—to fly to Hong Kong for a two-week run, which, too, quickly sold out, upstaging even a professional production of 42nd Street. Fans were showing up to our fancy hotel, waiting in the lobby to get our autographs and take pictures with the cast. It was surreal—until then, except for summers down south with my family, I’d never been out of the country, but there I was, living out loud every fantasy I’d ever had of traveling the world as an actress. “Shoot, I’m on the right page,” I said, hugging myself as I gazed out the window overlooking the hills of Hong Kong, my best friend by my side. You couldn’t tell us a single, solitary thing; the hotel was lovely—on par with the Mandarin Oriental in New York, which meant it was first class all the way, with beautifully appointed rooms I’d never before seen or experienced. The shades and curtains opened electronically with the push of a button; this twenty-year-old girl, a product of southeast DC, had never seen anything like that. “This right